Thursday, March 5, 2015

Growing up with Mr. Spock by Robin Janney

This
past Friday saw the passing of Leonard Nimoy.He was a man of many talents: an actor, a poet, an author, a father and
stepfather and grandfather, film director, photographer, friend and I’m sure
there are even more items that could be added to his list.He was also a member of the US Army Reserves
back in the 1950’s.When you live to be
83, you have many chances to wear many hats like he did.

Spock and Isis from TOS Assignment Earth

For
many of us, the role that immediately springs to mind when we consider his
career is that of Commander Spock of the USS Enterprise. A role that spanned decades across two
different series, and a whole bunch of movies.

I
myself was not even born when Star Trek The Original Series aired in the
sixties. And the ironical part of my
love for almost all things Trek is, the first time I caught part of an episode
on our local PBS station…I hated it and refused to watch it. In my defense, I was not even a teen yet…and
the episode was By Any Other Name in
which the aliens were able to reduce a human life form into a gray block of
protein matter which was only reversible if the block remained undamaged, and I
had the unfortunate luck of having tuned in during the scene where one of the
aliens crushed the block of Yeoman Leslie Thompson (the only female redshirt to
have died during the series). Needless
to say, the disturbing murder upset me and I vowed to never watch Star Trek
again.

Which
lasted until I hit my teens and caught an episode of the spinoff, Star Trek The
Next Generation. I was a teen girl…and
Wesley Crusher was cute. From that one
episode, a love for this universe grew.
Oddly enough, I can’t tell you which Wesley centric episode it was…it
may have been Coming of Age when he
was trying out for Starfleet academy for the first time, or it may have been When the Bough Breaks. I just know it was an early season episode
where Wesley was wearing that awful grey jumpsuit.

Needless
to say, as I watched more Trek, TOS, TNG and DS9 as a teen, my crushes
changed. TOS I flip-flopped between the
three main stars until finally settling on Mr. Spock. I know that several of my creative writing
free writes in high school were Spock centric, with my very own “Mary Sue” character
as his love interest. Hey, I’m not ashamed
to admit it. I was a teen practicing my
writing and escaping reality at the same time.
I did all the cliché things to my stand-in too, gave her a better body,
made her a human-alien hybrid which I understand is fairly typical, gave her
epic alien powers cool enough to rival Q’s.
She’s come a long way in my imagination, and if nothing else, she’s
taught me a lot about all the characters I create. I think I’ll leave that for another post.

Spock
was and is a character of depth. You
could count on him to be the calm, steady voice in the midst of a battle. He rarely raised his voice, unless it was
just too loud on the bridge or under the influence of pon farr or being taken back to a time before Vulcans began to
utilize logic. He was not a warm
character, but many shows gave us glimpses into the tightly controlled emotions
and passions he had. It wasn’t that
Vulcans have no emotions, but that they chose to not allow their emotions to
rule their decisions.

For
all that Gene Roddenberry created the series and the initial character of
Spock, it was Leonard Nimoy who made
Spock who he is and indeed, the Vulcan race.
From the Jewish roots of the Vulcan hand greeting and phrase that goes
with it, to the famous Vulcan neck pinch (Nimoy felt Spock was too logical to
punch an adversary.) So even the character
of Spock that we see in the Trek novels counts as Nimoy’s creation. My favorite is Vulcan’s Heart, which is as close to a Romance as Trek gets. The
Pandora Principle, Saavik’s origin story, though not considered ‘cannon’,
is my second favorite. I prefer the
Vulcans over the Klingons who became so popular during The Next Generation time.
And that comes from my deep loyalty to Spock and the man who made him.

If
it hadn't been for my fanfiction concerning both Star Trek and Star Wars during
my youth, I’m not sure where I would be today.
My strongest memory of growing up with Spock and the gang were watching
the episodes on our local PBS station; they started coming on around 10 or
10:30 and they showed 3 episodes back to back.
With no commercials, fundraising seasons tended to drag though. In my imagination, we were friends and with
them I was accepted and admired –something I had not experienced in my
youth. Trek especially kept me sane with
their vision of a future where all people were accepted for who they were,
regardless of their religion, their appearance, or their personality
quirks. We won’t talk about how Lt.
Reginald Barclay in The Next Generation
struggled with being…different. That’s
another matter entirely and served to drive home how easily it can be to
ostracize someone without meaning to.

Sadly,
before Friday I could have told you more about Spock than I could have the man
who portrayed him. Since Leonard’s
death, I have learned he was one cool cat.
He supported his friends He fought for equal pay
for one of his Star Trek costars and in the previous
article he even championed for their very jobs when it came time for the animated
series. He included full bodied women in
his photography.

Leonard
Nimoy was someone who had always been there, and even when he announced his
fight with COPD I kind of always expected him to be around. I wonder if they will include his death in
the next Star Trek reboot? Or if they
will properly let his character fade into the background? He has truly left a lasting legacy, on many
different fronts. From epic quotes both
as Spock and as himself, to countless people like myself who have been touched
even indirectly by his life’s work. He
will not be forgotten.